Affiliation:
1. Department of Economics, Management and Statistics University of Milan Bicocca Milano Italy
Abstract
AbstractThe cost effectiveness of medical treatments is not precisely known due to the compounding effect of multiple determining factors. Ambulance response time (RT) to emergency calls is exploited to learn more about the effect of the timing of treatment on health outcomes. This causal relation is identified by exploiting rainfall at the time of the ambulance run as a shock to RT. The analysis focuses on patients who have undergone a cardiac event and shows that a one‐minute increase in average RT leads to 105 more deaths each year in one Italian region. Finally, the economic value of the lives that would be saved by reducing RT is quantified to facilitate policymaking.
Funder
Einaudi Institute for Economics and Finance
Reference43 articles.
1. When Should You Adjust Standard Errors for Clustering?
2. Guidelines for cardiopulmonary resuscitation emergency cardiac care;American Heart Association A. H. A.;Journal of the American Medical Association,1992
3. Two-Stage Least Squares Estimation of Average Causal Effects in Models with Variable Treatment Intensity